


Stellar

by deuxlunes



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, Soulmate-Identifying Marks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-02
Updated: 2019-04-02
Packaged: 2019-12-07 09:42:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,406
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18233195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deuxlunes/pseuds/deuxlunes
Summary: For SEXIUniverse round 2Prompt #79: Sexiu are soulmates in a world where the first words your soulmate says to you show up on your skin soon after you're born and they go the rest of their lives waiting for someone to say those words to them.ㅡㅡㅡBy day, Minseok is an overworked and underappreciated intern producing music for other people. By night, he produces his own music, but doesn't yet have enough confidence in his work to be monetizing. That changes with a simple, strange message from a long-time fan, that says the one thing he never in his life expected to hear.





	Stellar

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you, prompter, for helping me out with an idea I'd been trying to tie together for a few years now! I really loved this idea and wish I could have run with it a little harder, but life took up a lot of my time while I was working on this. I still hope it does your prompt justice!
> 
> Additionally, there is a little bit of Korean in here that I'll translate in the end notes, but left untranslated for the fic because it flowed better. There will be spoilers in the end notes, so if you really need to know while you're reading, I recommend running them through a translator!

Like many things, it began as a seed—a birthmark on every baby that blossomed as they grew older into the words that would change their lives once the person they were meant to find uttered them to signal their arrival. Some babies were luckier than others, either in placement or in the words that spread unbidden across their skin, fully grown by the age of seven. Kim Minseok's birthmark was almost too slight to be seen, a thin, faint line running along his back, just beneath the curve of a rib. It was impossible for him to see without contortions and a science project of mirrors or a photograph. He had one—just one—taken at the insistence of his mother so that at least he would know what it said, although his parents were equally skeptical that these words (외계인은 입니까?) should ever be uttered to their son. Or to anyone. And while in elementary school Minseok had treasured the oddity of such a phrase, he grew to resent it over time as his friends all paired off in or just after school while he remained perennially single.

By adulthood Minseok hardly spared it a thought anymore, breezing through university and straight into the workforce. Production didn't fulfill him the way that he'd always expected it to, though: the creativity of the artist somehow always trumped his intuition. His boss assured him it was only a product of experience meeting inexperience, that once he wasn't so green he wouldn't need to argue over every suggestion. Minseok was never really certain which word his boss was reserving for him. Still, he took the comments—all of them—to heart and head, and more than ever those heavy feelings carried over into the work that had always propelled him.

On an almost weekly basis, he would upload new beats to his SoundCloud as blackICE. Their tempos dragged like his feet on the way home from the studio, like his eyelids as he forced them back open while dozing at his laptop. Their melodies, even the uptempo ones, were always imbued with a particular kind of melancholy he couldn't name because he'd spent so long ignoring the cause of it, that emptiness everyone around him seemed more capable of filling. If he ever spared a thought toward it, he would know its name in a heartbeat: loneliness. Not the usual kind, the kind that faded in a blink, like looking up in a café or a train car and the strange pang that hits when you find you're the only one left. It was the deeper kind: that lingering look at the single set of slippers by the door when you come home, or the way the television is still on the same sports channel you were watching last night when you dozed off on the sofa after eating cup noodles for the third time that week, or never finding a thing out of place because the only one around to move them is you, and you never have reason to move them except to dust around them. It's knowing the only person holding you accountable for anything is you.

Tonight, however, he wasn't so much lonely as angry. He'd had a confrontation with his boss at work that was more of a dismissal than a real conflict. The other intern—taken on sooner and therefore his senior even though he was a full two years younger—had come in after lunch waving around a brightly-colored flyer for an upcoming end-of-summer EDM festival. It was small, but small was good: small meant they were still looking for local talent to fill out the roster. Minseok's mind began turning over everything he might submit, already plugging tracks into a mental mixtape, when the voice of his boss cut through, loud and warm and giving that other intern an extra hour for lunch to pull together a mixtape. "Minseok-ssi can pick up the slack, right?" he'd suggested with a grin. And there had been nothing that Minseok could do but bow and agree, smiling back stiffly while he gritted his teeth.

As he waited for his latest track to finish uploading, the third in an experimental series with orchestral samples, he began drafting his letter of resignation. It took very little to irritate him these days, particularly at work, but the compliance asked of him today was too much. To pick up someone else's slack and be denied an opportunity he was just as qualified for (more than qualified for, _over_ qualified for) in the same breath? Minseok had been an _intern_ for almost three years at half the salary he'd been promised at hire—a promise that had been broken almost 18 months ago when they officially failed to take him on full-time, which was, coincidentally, around the time the other intern had been taken on...

His fury fizzled like a fuse, his fingers flying across the keys in an effort to keep up with the way his thoughts boiled over. He would never send such a letter, of course, but the catharsis of saying everything he wanted, exactly how he wanted to, helped bit by bit to quell his anger. It was a full two pages by the time his words came up short, not quite finished and certainly something that would prevent him from ever being hired in the industry again. Yet as he read it over, he couldn't help laughing, which was the sand over the ashes of a flame that had thankfully put itself out. A small smile still tugged at the corner of his mouth when a notification caught his eye.

He had an email about a message received from someone on SoundCloud—his very first. Already, this night was giving up so much more than the day had taken away, and his smile grew much wider in anticipation as he logged in to read it in full. He recognized the username—spacewhale94—someone who never failed to like every track he uploaded, yet who never left a comment on a single one until today. The smile froze on his face when he got into the message, however, eyes widening and heart skipping maybe a few too many beats as he read the second line over, and over again, as if trying to leave room for something long overdue to at last click into place:

 

_The new track is dope!_

_Are you an alien? ㅋㅋㅋ_

 

It wasn't until his chest began to ache that Minseok realized he'd stopped breathing. One, noisy inhale was all it took to kickstart his heart again, but it still beat strangely, a little fluttering and quite loud against his ribs. It took even longer still for all the other cogs to start turning again, as if they needed that much time to figure out how to fit back together to form thoughts and chain together the how and why such a phrase would even come up. It was an open-and-shut case, of course; he'd titled the new track the first thing to come to mind, a whimsical invitation to match the feeling it had given him when listening back: "우주에 만나자"

Desperate to be suave despite the way his brain was still rebooting, Minseok managed a clumsy response that had none of the finesse of his earlier, rage-filled outpouring, nor any of the flirting that long-buried part of him was trying in vain to push to the surface.

 

_Thank you~!_

_And why? Are you feeling a little starstruck? Or was it just really just out of this world?_

 

Minseok almost screamed aloud after he hit send, both mortified and horrified. Instead, he quietly covered his face with his hands and groaned. "You're practically thirty," he lamented as he let his hands drop, one into his lap and the other to his mouse. "How could you not–?" There wasn't time to finish the thought before his inbox popped up another notification—a reply. Minseok hesitated just briefly before clicking it, although he shut his eyes tight for several long seconds while he decided whether he actually wanted to look or not.

 

_ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ_

_You're definitely the one who's out of this world. Your music helps keep me from losing my mind at work._

_Is there somewhere I could buy any of it? Or would you ever perform at any clubs around Seoul?_

 

With his head reeling, Minseok had a hard time understanding the words he read no matter how many times his eyes looked them over. He felt flushed, and maybe a little embarrassed by the compliments, although not in the usual, somewhat pleased way he usually felt when he received good remarks on his work. Is this how it had been for all of his friends? This overwhelming heat of humility and denial while craving more of all of it? This even and mind-boggling balance of shame and pride? Minseok had never wanted anything more than for his work to be recognized and praised.

Now all he wanted was to have answers for all of spacewhale94's questions, and to keep him talking to him. With one last reply for the evening, Minseok managed neither, but something else entirely that was going to prove either brilliant or completely idiotic.

 

_Really? That makes me really glad to hear!_

_The only gig I have lined up right now is a set at this summer festival next weekend in Hongdae. Let me know if you can make it._

 

It didn't occur to Minseok just how much he'd outdone himself when spacewhale94 wrote back faster than ever, enthusiastically declaring, _I'll see you there!!_ He read these words over with a much clearer head, his smile pressed thin enough that his lips nearly disappeared. After several moments, Minseok pushed away from his desk to head into his kitchen, and put on a pot of coffee.

He had a lot of organizing to do if he was going to have his mixtape done for tomorrow, just in time to submit to the festival coordinators.

  
  


❦

  
  


There is little else Minseok can do but trust in fate at this point. Although he'd already stopped literally holding his breath waiting for messages from spacewhale94—whose name turned out to be Sehun—he'd had it held theoretically until two days ago when he received his confirmation that the event coordinators had loved his mixtape. They'd even offered him an unexpectedly good timeslot, that was late enough in the day to be after dinner, but not so late that the crowd would be nothing but drunken fools. If he'd had the nerve, he might have asked Sehun _to_ dinner, but after six or seven drafts of the same stupid invitation, he decided none of the jokes were funny enough to play off in case Sehun said no.

And despite everything, that was still a very real and paralyzing fear that Minseok had carried since that very first message. Sehun had been following him almost silently for months, holding onto his music like a buoy but never saying a word until he came to Minseok with the singular thing no one in this life was ever expected to say. What did it mean? And what if he never said the right thing in reply? Could that happen? He'd never heard of it happening, but surely someone out there had something even more obscure and ridiculous scrawled over their skin than he did. Something that no one, nowhere, ever, would think to string together into a sentence.

But fate had brought them together long before either one of them had any idea they should have been brought together. Fate had gotten Minseok into the festival he'd lied about being in. And fate had him nervously bump into an enormously tall man carrying two large cups of bubble tea while he was busying shifting his weight and scanning the crowds for a person whose face he wouldn't be able to recognize.

"I'm so sorry!" Minseok said at once, hands up and eyes wide, torn away from the festival goers to inspect for spills and stains. Miraculously, both cups had survived, although the man holding them looked a little shaken, even if he was laughing.

"It's fine," he said gently. His voice matched his face perfectly, soft around the edges with a stern edge to it. But neither matched the body Minseok had hit, which stood more than a head above his own with impossibly broad shoulders to match. "You don't happen to know which way the South Stage is, do you? I'm supposed to be meeting someone there." He gestured with both cups while a sweet and somewhat shy smile crept across his face.

Minseok couldn't help but smile back and a small laugh of relief followed. The gesture brought his gaze down for just a moment, but the man's bare arms kept his attention. A wispy, light red birthmark furled across his left forearm like a tattoo proclaiming a familiar phrase. "Let's meet in outer space," Minseok said aloud, his voice almost catching his throat in a mix of panic and relief.

An awkward laugh from the man snapped Minseok back to attention and his eyes back up to the man's face. "It's a bit strange, right?" he said, shifting his weight on legs like stilts.

"Not as strange as mine." For a brief and wild moment, Minseok considered lifting his shirt to show it. Instead, he forced out a laugh that thankfully seemed to dispel a lot of the fear he'd been carrying for the last week and a half. "Lucky for me, you've already said it." Minseok barely left a moment for the man's brows to pinch together in confusion before quickly continuing, "I'm glad my biggest fan could make it today."

Sehun's mouth flapped a few times like he couldn't quite decide what to say first. He settled eventually on more shy laughter before his left hand, very belatedly, reached forward to offer one of the cups they'd almost ended up wearing instead. " _Are_ you an alien?" he asked, voice quiet enough that it risked getting swallowed up by the din around them.

"Maybe. Maybe not," Minseok replied with a smirk that he quickly wrapped around the straw to his bubble tea before he could make another terrible attempt at flirting. There would be plenty of time for puns now.

He thought it would be better to _space_ them out.

**Author's Note:**

> Minseok's birthmark reads: 외계인을 입니까? This translates to "Are you an alien?" I'm sure you can see why his parents were so disappointed and worried lol.  
> Sehun's birthmark reads: 우주에 만나자. This translates to "Let's meet in outer space." Definitely much cooler than Minseok's (sorry Minnie), but still a bit weird.
> 
> My original inspiration for this fic came largely from the song "Stellar" by Incubus, which opens with the line "Meet me in outer space." That was a little difficult to translate directly into Korean, so I went with what I gave Sehun because it's the same feeling, but a neater package! The prompt helped push me in this soulmates direction, which was exactly the right push I needed to have it all make sense. Please be on the look out for more fics in this universe! And please don't assume their story ends here~ Although I promise my space puns do, sorrynotsorry.


End file.
